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Aviation History
1936
1936 - 3038.PDF
NOVEMBER 12, ig36- FLIGHT. 4^3 The Outlooks A Running' Commentary on Ait Topics A Supply Minister? / T is alleged in some quarters that Sir Thomas Inskip, Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, is devoting too much of his time and energies to questions of supply— that instead of considering whether the Territorial Army is t>iving the R.A.F. exactly the services which are necessary for air defence, whether the design of aircraft supplied to the Fleet Air Arm is always suitable to naval requirements, or whether more Army officers ought to be attached annu ally to the army co-operation squadrons of the R.A.F. he is too much occupied with numbers of machine guns turned out, and suchlike. The allegations may not be true, but still there is a growing demand among members of Parlia ment for the appointment of a Minister of Supply. Generally speaking, this may be a very good idea, but it would certainly be a very bad thing if responsibility for placing contracts for aircraft and aero engines were to be taken out of the hands of the Air Ministry. The present system has been built up by experience, and is on the whole working very well indeed. To disturb it would be a very retrograde step. That Record r HE Aeronautical Correspondent of the Morning Post threw something of a scare into the aviation com munity last Monday by publishing an article which made it appear that the altitude flight made on September 26 by Sqn. Ldr. Swain in a Bristol monoplane with Bristol Pegasus engine is not a world's record. Flight's telephones were ringing all the morning, and anxious voices were asking if it was true. Fortunately, we were able to reassure the enquirers that they need not be alarmed. As so many were sufficiently interested to ring us up it seems likely that other Flight readers are wondering what is the real meaning of the article in question, and for their benefit it may be explained that all records must be sub mitted to the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, more familiarly known as the F.A.I., for homologation. The F.A.I, publishes every three months an official Bulletin containing a list of world's records in the different categories of aircraft. The last to appear included the records homologated up to October 1, 1936. Somewhat naturally, it takes a little time to examine the figures relating to a record, and in view of the fact that Sqn. Ldr. Swain did not make his altitude flight until September 28, it is scarcely surprising that his flight was not homo logated in time to be included in this issue of the Bulletin. Misleading r HE heading '' British Height Record not accepted was therefore totally misleading, and the first para graph of the article did not help to clarify the position hy stating that "the height record recently established for Britain by Squadron-Leader F. R. D. Swain does not rank as a world's record." It is the practice of the F.A.I., and has been for years, to put at the top of the first page of the Bulletin a list of what one may term "out-and-out" records, i.e., ex- remes in any particular performance, irrespective of the c ass of aircraft which put up the performance. Thus, the dlhtude record quoted is the American balloon record, ecause it represents a greater height than has yet been reached by a heavier-than-air machine. The four records ]j d ln this part of the Bulletin are : Distance in a straight ne' distance over a closed circuit, altitude, and speed over a short straight-line course. It is true that the Bulletin terms these four records world's records, while the rest of the records listed are termed Classified International Records, but that is merely a way of distinguishing them from the '' out-and-out'' records, and certainly does not indicate that they are not world's records. Uplifting M ENTION was made by Dr. Lachmann in his recent lecture to the R.Ae.S. of the sort of maximum lift coefficients which we may expect to obtain from the various high-lift devices. An interesting confirmation now comes from America, in the form of an article in the October issue of the American Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences. The author is Mr. George J. Higgins, of the Uni versity of Detroit, and the article gives the results of tests on an aerofoil with slotted flaps carried out in the 7ft. by 10ft. wind tunnel of the University of Detroit. The tests were made at an Equivalent Reynold's Num ber of 577,000 on a model wing of 6oin. span and ioin. chord. Unfortunately, the author forgets to mention the length of the slotted flap, but it is to be assumed that it was a full-span flap. Its chord was 30 per cent, of the wing chord. The wing section was the Gottingen 398 with the thickness increased 1 per cent. With the flap set at 45 degrees, the maximum lift coeffici ent, corrected to full-scale conditions, was 2.12 (or 1.06 in the old British "absolute" units). With the flap at 20 degrees the CL was as high as 2.07. The most interesting thing about the tests, however, is that the profile drag co efficient is low at fairly high lift coefficients. For example, with the flap set at 20 degrees the minimum profile drag coefficient is only 0.0250, and the remarkable thing is that this low value occurs at a lift coefficient of 1.8. This means that the wing fitted with the slotted flap is very efficient indeed for take-off and for climb at low forward speeds. On the North-West Frontier / T has always appeared difficult to get an impartial opinion on the exact value of aircraft in operations on the North-West Frontier of India. The opinions of most commentators have the appearance of being coloured by partiality for their own Service, whether it be the Army or the Air Fcrc-e, &r»d rather extreme views have been ex pressed on both sides. A Commander-in-Chief, however, ought to be impartial, for his chief object in life is to protect the Frontier at the least cost in money and lives, and to do this he must (presuming him to be sensible and conscientious) make the most effective use of every weapon which he can command. Especial weight must, there fore, be given to the paper read last week before the Royal United Services Institution by Field Marshal Sir Philip Chetwode, late C.-in-C. in India. The Field Marshal said that the coming of the air arm was one of the most important developments of recent years in the Indian defence problem. Of its actual utility he said that the reconnaissance machines (i.e., those of the Army co-operation squadrons) were invaluable, for they let the troops know where the enemy was and which heights were held against them. Of the bombers he said that they often dealt successfully with a single troublesome mullah and nipped the trouble in the bud. But when the Frontier was aflame and the laskars were out in force the bombers by themselves could not stop the movement because the tribesmen left their villages to be bombed, hid in caves, and presented no target for the bombers.
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